Faster than light

For all that hoped in 2011 to find neutrino to travel faster that light, the 2012 confirmation of the mistake in the measurement and final confirmation that neutrino behaves in accordance to special relativity (not traveling faster than light) was a kind of anticlimax. Unlike for few of us that knew in advance that scientific measurement embedded in 21st century cannot in principle find any stuff traveling faster than light and at the same time that there should in principle exist physical (material) realm in which particles do not behave in accordance to special relativity and can travel faster than light. We should claim this not only from the philosophical point of view but as much supported by gaps like Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, quantum entanglement, black hole or cosmic inflation in early universe.

Last sentence in fact claims, that philosophy is as much a science as physics. They occupy Mobius strip so that they are all the time clearly distinct if you take an isolated part of a strip at consideration but at the same time transgressing one to another if you take the strip longitudinally.

The aim is not the science

Bear in mind that present discussion is not important for the sake of science. Science as such is already history. Science as such is doomed since it cannot explain itself from the scientific point as Gödel proved so clearly and irrefutably. This discussion is important for the sake of our memetic environment, that is defined only by such false scientific discourse. We should finally understand the link between scientific virus and our babbling about democracy, freedoms, inequality and other topics that in the last instance defines what our everyday life looks like. When we take false scientific presumptions as axioms we behave like when we ignore the solidity of glass on the base of its transparency for one major difference: when we trespass glass, we immediately feel a pain, while when we daily misplace scientific obscurity for its apparent transparency, we feel enlightened on the short run not noticing devastating effects on the longer run.

Let us take few lessons here only, since many more of them are to be found around this blog.

There is no fixed background

In the moment when Lee Smolin pointed so clearly to the fallacy of fixed background as an inherent fallacy of all modern age theories including Einstein’s, it should be clear, that to understand anything as being fixed, is in fact wrong. That does not mean, that speed of light is not fixed and measurable, but that the theory that claims that anything (including speed of light) represents a fixed background, is wrong in principle. To say that anything is the fastest, the largest, the smallest, the whatever… and that this constant then represents a background of a theory, is wrong in principle.

In the more mundane reality the fact that there is no fixes background could be understood through famous maxim of contemporary management: “If you are fast on the market that is only enough to stay in the same position, since everybody is fast and many faster than you”. But beware: this maxim belongs to the same fixed background fallacy as Einstein’s theory. In this case “the position” is taken as being measured on some fixes background. But we know from experience that sometimes you need no speed, but simply to change the playing ground (position). Take for example blockchain disruption. While not only fiat financial world but also startup world represented by Kickstarter accelerated more and more, striving to be faster than competition, blockchain allowed some losers from previous playground to gain momentum using almost no acceleration. There was no fixed background for them, and they used and abused fixation of traditional players. Light was in fact faster than light for them.

The funny paradox is that since Einstein did not understand his own general relativity, since he did not take it seriously, he jumped to safe but false environment of special relativity. Should he stick to general relativity he would most probably feel at home with entanglement and other quantum phenomena.

A third window to phenomena

The other lesson comes from Robert E. Ulanowicz and his book A Third Window (2009). Among many disruptions that he invokes in this book that was for obvious reasons completely overlooked by mainstream science, there is one that really blows your mind by its simplicity.

If complex systems exist, why would not complex chance. If everything evolves, if universe evolves, if life evolves, why would not laws evolve?

His claim supported by above mentioned anomalies in physics is simple: physical laws are not fixed forever but change over time. It is not that something travels faster than light, but that light traveled faster or slower than measured today, sometimes in the past or will sometimes in the future (or in some other places due to time – space entanglement).

It is somehow surprising that Ulanowicz breakthrough could be easier to understand and to accept through memetic realm than through physical one. Take for instance democracy meme or better, meme complex. It is now accepted that democracy in ancient Greek Athens was based on different laws that today’s western world democracy. Democracy then was environment for few only, while democracy today does not include animals and robots. Laws that define democracy change over time. But since we know that memetic evolution that follows Lamarckian path changes faster than genetic Darwinian path and even much faster than thermodynamic physical change occurs, we should not be baffled by possibility that all physical laws change over time by definition. They change much slower, so we cannot experience them like genetic drifts or memetic fashions, but they still change.

Reductionism hates blockchain

This brings us back to major fallacy that we daily make strongly supported by scientific ideology: reductionism. Reductionism hates complexity. Reductionism loves central banks and centralized democracy. Reductionism loves anarchy since anarchy gives alibi for centralization. Reductionism hates blockchain, since this is first anti-anarchic but at the same time decentralized system that accepts the fact that reality cannot be reduced to one principle. That is why blockchain is hated by fragelista (term coined by Nicholas Taleb) and all other lovers of hierarchical order almost as much as freemasonry.